August Insanity

August...not quite the definition of long, lazy, summer days for me.

The good news: Five registrations this past week. Thank goodness. Two for Sunbeams One, and three for Sunshine One. Which is good, as I had not had any Sunshine One registrations and was a bit concerned! This has definitely put me in an excited-for-fall mood.

Other August insanity has included cleaning. I generally enjoy cleaning and organizing. For the last year or so, my cleaning/organizing has been in crazy spurts. I'll suddenly, almost out of the blue, get this urge to clean for several hours straight. I've had a few of these so far this month. Wednesday was one of them, a kind of miserably cold and rainy August day-not even 20 degrees outside, gloomy to the point of needing lights on at 2pm, and quite heavy rain at times while other times were just drizzly. That was the day that I managed to slice my finger four on an industrial strength staple on a box of my elementary school scrapbooks. Not fun. I also almost dropped a huge box full of various (mostly junk) items that I found on top of the pattern cabinet in the storage room on myself. I had climbed up on a chair and was getting it down, with other boxes and things on the floor below me when I realized that it was not the smartest idea in the world...but I was already too far gone to just stop. Fortunately, no spilling of the box and only mildly bruised knees and strained arms.

The start of August also involved me shipping my flute off to be serviced. UPS just didn't understand my pain at sending my flute off! I spent $187 on shipping because I insured it as far as I could (which was only to $2500 because I listed it as breakable). Thankfully, I got it back today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I realized tonight that I may have missed the grader/marker opportunity this year because I was slow to check it out online. However, I have marked for this prof for two years and out of all the professors at the FoM, she is definitely the most approachable, so I emailed saying that I hadn't seen the position listed (or any for the FoM for that matter) and that I understood that it was probably my own fault for not checking and doing this sooner, but that if it was still a possibility, I had enjoyed the position the past two years and looked forward to the possibility of continuing it in the fall. We'll see. I'll be sad if it's not available anymore, but am surprisingly calm about it...if it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. I still have the experience, and may someday have another marking job.

My piano lessons also started up this week. I rode my bike over as I have done on a number of occasions-even since my heart went funny-but really struggled. It was bad enough that a couple of times, I actually got off and walked a little ways. I ended up late to the lesson, and frustrated with myself (not to mention slightly concerned), but at least in one piece. Tonight when I went bike riding things were fine...I did pump up my tires a bit, so maybe that was part of it? Not sure.

Tonight was a bit of a happy/sad night. My good friend SK is leaving for a new city, and then back to bible college on sunday or monday, so this was the last time that I will see her for quite a while. Happy that the move to a new city two provinces away is a good one-her mom got a job after being laid off-but sad to see her go. She was quite concerned about me bike riding over, but it went surprisingly well. My heart cooperated tonight, I guess...even riding over one of the steepest and longest bridges in my city to get to the coffee place was not as difficult as I had anticipated. As I told my friend B tonight online, I guess I have to remember during the bad days (like monday) that there are also good days...and that gently pushing my 'normal' is much more effective and less frustrating then fighting it tooth and nail. Fighting it tooth and nail only seems to make things worse!

In talking online with B, with both mentioned that in our goals for the fall, health goals were among them. I CANNOT do another year like I did this past year. I actually cried-in front of my dad-when I looked at my booklist (where I have kept track of all the books I've read since I was about 10 or 11)...and saw that I had not read a single fun book between January and the end of my exams in April. I had read a few pages here and there of one of my 'Comfort Books', but that was it. For anyone who has known me for more than a few minutes, they know that one of my lifelong pleasures is reading. To not finish any books for the space of more than three months...shows just how messed up I was. I also didn't finish any knitting or crocheting projects, although I knit a bit of a scarf during music festival in early March. I knew that I had been in a bad state mentally and physically...but seeing those lists (book as well as craft) really set it in stone. Never again. If I attempt something like that again, I'll probably end up in a hospital...not just having tests run in a hospital and urgent care.